When a hot guy or flirty girl has a small crowd of people any given time a crowd can gather. That’s social clout and personality at work. But when an average guy or girl does this without the personality or looks to aid them. You have to ask what’s compelling the crowd to stay. And when you take that split second to look a second longer than you would given how attractive the average person is, you’ll almost always find an object actually at the center of that crowd. These days it’s likely a new piece of tech or a toy that’s been marketed to adults as it it’s not a toy. A new phone, new smartwatch, new drone or electric vehicle.
We used to have a name for this kind of behaviour, of social clout that followed so closely to possession of an object, that it can’t be distinguished from it’s owner. The behaviour was magic and the object was a talisman.
People who use talismans know that they don’t have any power over their situation, but also know that inferred power, real or imagined, can compensate for a positional weakness. And the power is inferred from the talismans they keep.
You see the inference of a Apple watch is that successful sexy people wear them. It doesn’t matter if you have a dad bod and work in middle management in a Costco polo shirt. The inference does that magic for you. Get the new watch and show it off and those who recognize that successful sexy people are the market for Apple watches, because they are the subject of the watch’s advertisements, make that inference visible and the attention and social clout are yours. An attractive and funny guy could go through the same motions with a Casio base model and get the same kind of social clout and attention with none of the bells and whistles that the Apple model has in its hardware. Why? Because he doesn’t have a dad bod, and he does have a personality. The watch becomes a joke that he can laugh at with the crowd that gathers instead of a trick that works on similar appetites for entertainment. Trick and jokes are both funny in a magical sort of way. So long as you can tell the difference between the two.
This is why Apple products have fanboys, and why Tesla products had them too until they linked arms, for a while there, with the red hat fanboys and were called out for practicing a darker kind of magic. They were already doing that when it was socially acceptable to have an Apple Watch and a Tesla Model X, but not when the red hats showed up because those talismans where from a different kind of power. One that had personality behind it not just novelty.
“Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments.”
Exodus 7:11 KJV
Note how the scriptures say these magic users achieved their ends of copying what a powerful man did in their presence. If you read further, their sticks turned into snakes too, but Moses’s snake had the chops to show them a magic trick is only as powerful and valid as those it works on. This is why when a successful sexy person also has an Apple watch, it’s seen as unnecessary. Or when a hot dude in well fitting clothing jumps on the electric scooter he’s seen as being silly. When before the dad bod type could gather a crowd looking at the flashy new electric scooter, because it was new and there was no real power to show how silly it was. It gave the guy with the dad bod a speed he couldn’t push on a regular scooter, which would have been something to see if he had the body to make him go that fast. But he doesn’t. The electric scooter provided the speed that his legs can’t provide in pursuit of a clout his social standing could never attain. Do a few laps in front of the proles and the crowd is sure to form at the finish line.
Or let’s bump it up a wheel size.
How many attractive or capable people do you see riding electric bicycles? Is it near the same amount of actual cyclists that also ride electric bicycles? Or are they on plain old regular bicycles? When the two of them both climb a hill who’s sexier at the top. Who has more social clout? Is it the one with well defined, lean muscles and a tight fitting spandex suit. Or is it the pudgy guy with a spandex waistband on his shorts and an XXL t-shirt. They’re both wearing bike helmets. And those have never been attractive, or something that signals power. But then again, I didn’t tell you who was riding which bike did I? You figured that part out on your own. Because deep down you know what someone using power that doesn't belong to them looks like. Even if you didn’t have the words for it. But since you’ve got to this part of the blog post you now know what a talisman is and what it does.
Now you get to look at your life as a Christian and see how many magic users fill the ranks of your day to day. With tech that might as well be magic, given how little we know of it’s construction and function. The pastor who’s a gadget geek and could really use less potlucks. The youth pastor who always has the latest gaming consoles. The groups pastor who conjures the Right Now Media account on demand. And the church admins that think the Enneagram is the key to all hidden knowledge of the church staff. You get the idea?
“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,”
Deuteronomy 18:10 KJV
Not a whole lot of child sacrifice and witches in the church these days. But if we’re being honest there is a lot of enchantment that is only enabled by a simple view of the tech that enables. From the magic portals your online pastor depends on to do his church services to the worship team’s atmospheric smoke and lights shows, that even Solomon in all his splendor didn’t need for the temple. When you can see that technology functions like a talisman, it can open your eyes to a lot more discernment that you ever had previously. Which you will know is a good thing and a God thing when conviction follows.
Because the last thing the lesser snakes did was repent before real snake ate them.
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